Looking back at the life of this blog, it didn’t get much attention. The attention that it did get was early on and trickled down except from an unexpected visitor (turned follower) towards the present. This lack of attention is definitely because up to this point I have not done any promotion or been very strategic in my posting. This could be resurrected with a few different tactics. Using other social media platforms to promote the content and the blog as a whole could be used. Using my own personal accounts could work to start to build a base of an audience. Then in the situation of this blogging project, potentially reach out to others who are doing the same and sharing each others content. While sharing content can be very effective another tacit that I think could grow my audience is to use more relevant words and content for search engine optimization. The content I have posted so far has been pretty specific and not likely to pop up in many situations.

Growing my reach is definitely something that could be worked on. Reach in a simple term is your potential audience. It is how many people see your content and getting your name and content out there. It is so important to reach a larger number of people to try and gain your niche audience. I think starting off with a large audience and then moving down to smaller and smaller categories and niches is strategy that has proved to work well.

After growing my reach I think it is important to build visitor loyalty. Visitor loyalty tells how often someone goes onto a website and from that information goals can be made. This is important to know that your content is reaching an audience that cares and that it will continue to be read or viewed.

The depth of the visit is also something that should be looked into to see how engaging your content is. In a blog, making posts with intriguing titles is a way to do this that attracts the reader. Keeping a reader on your site (blog) for as long as possible is going to keep your site in their mind and bring them back.

After expanding reach I think it is very important to monitor impressions. Personally I know if something is naturally in my feed when using social media it is more likely to catch my eye. Seeing how your content is being viewed is important.

Keeping a low bounce rate is something that should be kept, this can be avoided by having a visually appealing blog with relevant and a interesting content.

When wanting to see results I think it is important to remember that any growth takes time and effort. No one is going to regularly visit a blog without content that is being posted sporadically. The blogs that I visit regularly normally have a few posts I haven’t read which is nice in my eyes because when visiting a sight I think that I like be engaged for a longer period of time than just one post.

The most important part of analytics is numbers from whatever you are looking for. Quantitative results are what I feel matters when dealing with social media growth.

Project for Awesome, an internet based company, audience analysis is tailored to a unique but broad audience. Project for Awesome has a three step process in which it carries out its campaign, so in turn the audience is gained in three steps as well.

The first step is described by Project for Awesome as “community members from around the world make videos about a charity that is particularly meaningful for them. These are uploaded to the organizations website, but also should be shared around the internet and viewed, discussed, commented upon, etc.”. So, when doing an initial analysis one would think this step would be general but when taking a closer look at the typical YouTube demographic it can be narrowed down a bit. When looking at a the top content creators it is typically a millennial who posts on a consistent and frequent videos. While the top 10 include mostly males, the majority of creators are female. The typical content creator is not the only thing that needs consideration, it should also be taken into accounts that are willing and able to post for various charities. So narrowing it down from all members of YouTube to a more sizable and realistic group of people who are more likely to participate is a key element to identifying the audience for the campaign in its first stage.

The second step in the campaign also calls for narrowing the audience but on a different level. The second step is described as “…fundraising. We will have an amazing selection of perks for you to choose from if you want to donate to the Foundation to Decrease World Suck through our Indiegogo campaign“. The audience who will actually donate to the causes in the campaign are most likely going to be the demographics who spend the most amount of time on YouTube. This demographic is millennials with a high concentration of fourteen to seventeen year olds (81.9%). When using the Indiegogo campaign it is so important to have a relatively defined audience when doing the rewards for donations. It is also important to tailor the campaign to those who will give the most. According to Philanthropy.com “middle-class Americans give a far bigger share of their discretionary income to charities than the rich. Households that earn $50,000 to $75,000 give an average of 7.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity, compared with an average of 4.2 percent for people who make $100,000 or more”.

The third part of the campaign is a growing tacit used in campaigns on the web which is a 48-hour continuous live stream. Finding an audience for this step of the campaign is similar to the second part of the campaign because the campaign is still in search of donations and this time it is not for a reward using Indiegogo.

Although the parts of the campaign all differ identifying an audience for the entire campaign can be done as well. The audience is most likely fourteen to twenty four year olds consuming three or more hours of web content daily with a majority of that time on YouTube. The audience also will hail from an household that earns over $50,000 annually.

Identifying a key message for this audience can be simplified into finding a strategy to instill the benefits of giving to charity and helping those in need. The overall audience is a group of adolescents and young adults who are seem to be impressionable.The key message that is used by the campaign seems to be emphasizing how big of an impact each donor can have and focuses on reaching individuals. Expressing how important the causes are and how each and every donation makes a difference is the campaigns approach to reaching their goals. The campaigns results are as shows.

The annual Project for Awesome (P4A) charity campaign like most social media campaigns follow a Strategic Planning Model which some believe is the key to success when creating and carrying out a campaign.

The business goal directly from the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, Inc is that they are a “100% volunteer operated and exists solely for the purpose of raising funds to be donated to other non-profit organizations”. While this goal is all inclusive of what Project for Awesome stands for some other goals can be implied. The implied goals is to better the world, implied from the foundations name as well as raise awareness and promote for the causes of the organizations that receive the money from Project for Awesome.

This campaign is very different than others because the motives behind it are only to raise awareness and money for others. Project for Awesome does not keep any of the money raised. The only expenses used are those that are required of a campaign. The specific costs that are associated with P4A include perk manufacturing, shipping, Indiegogo fees, and merchant (credit card) fees. Some problems that could be apparent with this campaign is the doubt of where those who donate money is going to go to, as well as the perception that could occur of an organization Project for Awesome is trying to help taking their help in a negative way (the organization thinking that P4A thinks they can’t raise funds on their own).

The Project for Awesome campaign is now an annual event with thousands of supporters but in its earlier years attracting content creators to promote the campaign was a struggle as well getting those content creators subscribers/followers to interact and get behind a cause. With most campaigns their is always the challenge and doubt that it won’t be perceived well by the public. In 2007 the internet and social media was much more limited in users and platforms proving difficulty when comparing to social media campaigns now.

The aim of the campaign is to really emphasize how easy it is to help a cause and bring awareness to causes some viewers may have never been aware that the problem existed.

Since YouTube is main platform of choice for Project for Awesome, when researching the site some interesting information makes it obvious on why this site is the best to execute this campaign. “YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.” this kind of exposure really heightens chances of getting donations. According to The Guardian, a UK based news site, 30-59 year olds are the most charitable so with YouTube’s reach it is logical to use the platform to distributive the message and encourage donation.

Some more statistics on YouTube prove that the websites success is only continuing to grow and become more of a power house for sharing content and getting that content viewed. When analyzing YouTube it is also apparent that it has a large adolescent audience and exposing them to the causes that Project for Awesome supports really adds another beneficial aspect to the campaign.

Polyvore, a social media platform with a focus on fashion, proves to be an exciting platform for those with even the slightest interest in fashion to take a chance with it. Founded in 2007, a trio of engineers from Yahoo, Pasha Sadri, Guangwei Yuan, and Jianing Hu, created an app to express, create, and buy outfit ideas from fashion all over the internet. A short description of what Polyvore is from the site itself is “a new way to discover and shop for things you love in fashion”. This description is a simple way to summarize the innovative platform that is Polyvore.

Polyvore main use is to create “sets” of different outfit pieces (and more..) from around the web to create a look to share with others. Each set typically features an outfit, accessories, some eye candy for the set, and a relevant caption (with a title for the outfit or the occasion).

Users create and share their sets with the Polyvore community. Each user can use hashtags to itemize their set and allow it to be discovered. Creating a set is not difficult, it starts with searching for the first item you want in your set whether it be a dress, necklace, or top and then choosing the create a new set option and continuing to search and browse for items to go along with it and adding them to the set you created. Once all the items are in the set they can be toyed with meaning re-sized, replaced, and made to appeal to the eye. A simple look at how to use Polyvore is demonstrated in the infographic below.

Sadri, the founding CEO, described Polyvore as the “Legos of fashion”. This analogy really allows someone who is not sure what Polyvore is to make a connection because the site is like building blocks of fashion. In recent years, the fashion site has added home decor elements to allow sets to be created to create looks for rooms much like outfits.

I think the most innovative part of Polyvore is that although creating sets is fun and visual appealing and could be used just simply for fun and to inspire, almost everything that is used in a set is able to be bought. The item whether clothes, perfumes, or furniture almost always have an external link to purchase the item. This feature of Polyvore really drives business and brands to strive to be featured on Polyvore because of its drive for business. A case study by Shopify.com proved that Polyvore had the highest order cost over many other social media platforms. This study brings Polyvore a lot of notability through out the web as a place for brands to go when dealing with eCommerce. An infographic from the study is below.

The audience of Polyvore started out being fashion forward woman but has expanded to a larger audience of creative men and women looking to be inspired, shop, and inspire others. Yahoo being the parent platform for Polyvore really provides a strong base for the app to influence others, when researching Polyvore and seeing how soon it came up in different search engines, when searching “Fashion App” it is usually the first to come up as a direct link and only things that come before it is articles which almost all feature Polyvore on lists of the best fashion apps.

Polyvore at first look would seem to be a niche platform turned app but after research and personal use of the app it is a user friendly app for anyone with any type of interest in fashion or online shopping for clothing.

Foundation to Decrease World Suck, Inc. a Montana-based 501(c)3 charitable organization is a company that is mostly based off of one huge social media campaign entitled Project for Awesome. Staring in 2007 the company started the campaign or “project” to essentially improve life on planet earth or in their words make the world suck less.

Unlike other social media campaigns this is all user generated which I find incredibly interesting. The Project for Awesome campaign is an annual event that bands together content creators on YouTube to raise money for all kinds of causes and relating charities. Anyone with a YouTube account can join in on the fun and raise for a cause.

The campaign works in three parts all involving social media. First being the uploading of YouTube videos expressing thoughts on a certain cause and charity associated along with it. Once uploaded to YouTube and the Project for Awesome (commonly abbreviated as P4A) site videos will be voted by users to determine charities that will receive donations (half of the proceeds go to foundations voted upon and the others go to Save the Children and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) The second part is the actual fundraising which is done on the popular fundraising site Indiegogo. For a week the fundraiser is set up and donations can be made. Indiegogo is an interesting site because for increments of funds donated a “perk” or reward is given to the person who donated. The third part of the campaign is the live stream aspect. A 48 hour livestream is set up with different events to help raise awareness and money.

Project for Awesome main focus is content curation. The use of YouTube content creators creating their own videos about the company is the main way that P4A gets its advertising. The strategy of having other create buzz rather than themselves is extremely beneficial to them. If the situation was different and P4A had one YouTube channel and had all the content uploaded on it would be extremely less effective because the audience would be minuscule when compared to audiences of different content creators. I cannot think of another company the relies on content curation so heavily. P4A’s doesn’t have strict brand guidelines but in most content uploaded for others it is apparent the company’s logo is used in the thumbnail of the video (although some accounts are not able to make custom thumbnails).

Two persuasive messaging strategies can be found in parts of P4A. Currently on the companies website the logos strategy can be seen. Facts and figures showing how much money was raised in the previous years campaign can be seen. The other messaging strategy that is apparent in the content curation aspect is pathos which is always a common factor when charities are involved. In videos created images and clips of emotional appealing things are in place to ensure a connection is made and a share, vote, or donation is made.